A crazy article by Halim Rane at the ABC:

In the aftermath of violent attacks, public commentary quickly reaches for a familiar label like “religiously motivated terrorism”. The term sounds intuitive but it is analytically flawed, socially harmful and counter-productive to both national security and social cohesion.

I would argue that a more accurate and useful concept is “identity-motivated terrorism”: the use or threat of violence against civilians to advance an agenda grounded in the perceived defence, restoration or supremacy of a collective identity.

This shift in language is not semantic politeness. It reflects what decades of research in political violence, radicalisation and security studies have consistently shown — namely, that religion is not the causal driver of terrorism, even when religious language is loudly invoked. The underlying motivation is identity: racial, political and/or civilisational.

This is like 1984. You can’t speak the truth.

It is quite correct to say that Islamist terrorism is based on an extreme minority interpretation of Islam. It is not correct to say that it isn’t based on religious belief.

The attackers were supporters of Islamic State – whose mission is to explicitly have a state run on 9th century Islamic rules.

Since the 9/11 2011 attacks there have been over 50,000 seperate attacks where Islam was a factor. Not 50, not 500, not even 5,000 but 50,000. To claim religion is not a factor is crazy.

The death toll since 9/11 is 313,262 killed and 380,603 wounded. I don;t think those victims think it is socially harmful to call a spade a spade.

The election will be on Saturday 7 November

Have spent two weeks in Bali doing an extended family holidays with the boys, their cousins, mother, uncle and grandparents.

A long wait for bags at Denpasar Airport, with Sam having a rest. There was around 45 minutes gap between the first and last bags coming off.

We were staying (at Garden View Ubud – highly recommended) near the Monkey Forest in Ubud and if you open your bag for any reasons a monkey will jump down and try to get into it. We also had them come around our hotel swimming pool and steal a bag of chips off us.

We visited Taman Safari Bali which I highly recommend. Heaps and heaps of animals and encounters.

If you think climbing a tree to get away from a tiger works, I have bad news for you!

This is the view from the toilets at the restaurant!

Feeding a giant turtle.

The first part of the visit is walking around, and then you get to do a bus, jeep or cage visit around the wilder animals.

Not often you see the double humped camels.

You can even stay at the safari, so wake up to a rhino outside your place!

An elephant looking for food.

And after all that walking about, they have a water park to cool off on.

If you go to Bali with kids (or without), I highly recommend the Safari Park. We thought we’d be there for two to three hours and ended up there for eight hours.

Where do you start. First of all the Norwegian Government has zero votes on who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. But to link him not getting the prize to the US demanding Greenland is like a two year old having a temper tantrum. He really is deranged.

Mockery is the best response. Well the 25th Amendment would be the best response, but this is second best.

The various memes of Trump claiming prizes won by others have been good. My favourites are Serena Williams and Milli Vanilli.

Trump is not just sending demented e-mails over Greenland. He has said he will impose 10% punitive tariffs on all the NATO allies like the UK and Germany who don’t back his campaign to take over Greenland. The US is now more of a threat to NATO than Russia!

Nick Shirley has had over 135 million views of his video where he went around various Minnesota state funded daycare centres and found no pupils. It gave the visual element to the reporting around fraud in the state, especially involving Somalis who makes up around 3% of the Twin Cities population.

Tim Walz who was standing for a third term as Governor has now withdrawn. A year ago he was close to becoming Vice-President and today he can’t get re-elected in his own state.

1. At last count 10,000 5 to 13 year olds in NZ were not enrolled anywhere and no one was actively looking for them.
   
2. Approx. 11,000 children are home-schooled. These children are not “truant” but it does indicate an amount of dis-engagement with our state system.
   
3. Term 3 2025 attendance data showed a statistically significant decline on Term 3 2024.
   
4. Daily attendance statistics in term 4 2025 showed more decline:
   
   “The government wanted 80 percent of students attending more than 90 percent of their classes – the benchmark for regular attendance. To reach that goal, daily attendance needed to reach and remain at 94 percent, but the highest point reached in term four was 90 percent, with 88-89 percent recorded often and average daily attendance of 85 percent, similar to term three.”
   
5. Australia considers themselves to be in deep crisis mode with attendance as their full attendance (students attending 90% of the time) is at 60%. Ours is at 50%.
   
   These comments are important:
   
   “We can’t nudge our way out of this crisis. Australia needs a wholesale rethink of how to get children back into the classroom. We are not alone. Many countries have had problems getting school attendance to where it needs to be. But some have taken the issue far more seriously than us. England is one such country we can learn from. Students in England attend school 94 per cent of the time, compared to Australia’s 89 per cent. England has made attendance a national priority, driving a relentless public messaging campaign to elevate the importance of school attendance, radically increasing the transparency of attendance data, setting higher expectations for families and schools, and adopting a whole-of-government approach to tackle barriers to attendance.”

As I have said many times, curriculum changes, “structured literacy”, etc – can only produce marginal gains if the children who need help the most are attending school irregularly – at best.

Just released NCEA/UE cohort data (as opposed to leavers data that comes out later) shows a small improvement in L1 NCEA but declines in Level 2 NCEA and UE (key indicators).

Education in NZ in 2026 needs a great deal of work – from attendance to achievement. Let’s hope.

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Day 4 was a fairly short 7 kms to the water taxi pick up. But we left early again as it was now a 10 am pick up. Again a bit undulating.

A nice view of the last hut as we went around the track.

Nice and easy track here.

Opening up a bit.

Again so many beautiful lakeside views.

This is where the water taxi picks us up. I went swimming for around 20 minutes before it arrived and wow was it a great way to end the tramp – very refreshing.

This is the view from the water taxi of the climb on Day 1.

Got back to the holiday park where I had a much needed ice cream and pie!

The original plan was to get the water taxi at 4 pm and stay overnight in Wairoa. But as I got out at 10.30 am I decided to just drive back to Wellington that day. I offered to pay for the night I had booked at Vista Motor Lodge (where I had left spare luggage) but the owner kindly refused and said they were just glad I had a great time. Definitely a good place to stay at in Wairoa.

I went into the tramp with similar views to many that the Great Walk was going to be inferior to others, and this was due to the Tuhoe taking over management of the Ureweras. But I was pleasantly surprised by how good the track was, and I actually really enjoyed hearing from the Tuhoe wardens and water taxi skipper about the area.

Like many I was aghast at the removal of private huts in the area (they explained they want to plan where huts are needed in the future, but my view is they should leave the current huts in place until they have such a plan), but this didn’t extend to the Great Walk, and despite tensions the partnership between DOC and Tuhoe in running it is working.

I would definitely recommend doing the track. I’d happily go back and do it again.

Next summer is Great Walk No 10 – the Routeburn!

The Herald reports:

Several cases of potentially defamatory comments, breaches of privacy and unsupported assertions were found in Youth MPs’ draft speeches by officials tasked with reviewing them before delivery during a Youth Parliament overshadowed by censorship claims earlier this year. 

For example, edits were suggested after speeches implied MPs were “accepting bribes or promotion in exchange for supporting certain policies” or made “accusations that funding was misappropriated”, according to the Ministry of Youth Development (MYD).

So some Youth MPs were planning to make defamatory allegations of bribery and theft. No prizes for guessing which party the MPs they were representing would have been from.

Steven Pinker wrote at the Free Press:

Human progress continues, with some backsliding.

Since publishing two books on human progress (The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, and Enlightenment Now, 2018), every year I update my graphs on the major dimensions of human well-being. Most people think everything’s gotten worse, but that can be a misleading impression from following headlines, a nonrandom sample of the worst things happening anywhere on earth. The data show that, after the pandemic blip, global life expectancy, affluence, and literacy are at all-time highs, while extreme poverty and violent crime are at all-time lows. The world has backslid in democracy and war deaths, taking us back to levels in the late 1990s—though we’re still better than at any time in the 20th century since relevant data were recorded.

Worth remembering how much things have improved (especially for those in the third world) in recent decades.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

Bold ambition and fearless execution – that’s what it has taken to get intense bilateral negotiations between India and New Zealand finalised so a trade deal could be announced just before the country broke for Christmas.

Bold ambition by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who faced down his detractors and pledged he would get an agreement in place during his Government’s first term in office.

Fearless execution by Trade Minister Todd McLay, who the PM empowered to deliver the deal and who brought it home within nine months of Luxon’s four-day visit to India earlier this year.

The relationship with India was regarded as almost broken under the previous Government.

Even back in 2018, Fonterra was forecasting that over the next seven years, the demand for dairy from Indian consumers is set to increase by 82 billion litres – seven times the forecast growth for China.

The country’s young population was looking to level up its dairy consumption with new products that met with their expectations of higher quality and nutrition.

There are opportunities now to invest in food manufacturing, infrastructure – including digital services and more to meet market demands.

One of the more interesting aspects is the ability to form joint-venture manufacturing facilities in India for exporting product into third markets.

Chinese dairy firms have exploited a similar regime in New Zealand to produce product for export to South East Asia.

Lots of opportunitiies.

Forgot to mention on Day 2, that the Tuhoe hut warden at Waiopaoa Hut was superb. She told us some of the history of the area, the legends about Lake Waikaremona, and also opened it up to general questions. An hour later she finally finished and commented she had never had so many. One of the questions was on pest control, and she explained that Tuhoe are trying to train up Tuhoe members in traditional trapping methods and that while there are fewer traps around the area, they are committed to protecting the birdlife etc.

The warden also allowed us to change our hut bookings for the next night. Really great to have such flexibility.

Today was going to be a long 18 to 20 km day so we set off around 7 am.

Many views of the lake as we walked alongside it.

Day 3 is euphemistically described as mainly flat. In reality is is quite undulating and you still do a fair bit of up and down. But nothing like Day 1.

This is a private hut between Korokoro and Maraunui campsites. It has potable water from a spring and trampers are welcome to fill up their bottles there, which is great of them. Even more important as Maraunui Hut had no working water supply from the hut, so anyone staying there has to fill up from the lake.

This large field is where Maraunui Hut is.

I had a very nice lunch at Maraunui Hut, and was soon joined by around a dozen King’s College students during their Duke of Edinburgh Award. It is an old and small hut and I strongly recommend to anyone doing the track to bypass this hut. even though it is in a convenient location.

The track was generally in good condition. It was muddy in places, but nothing out of the ordinary. In a couple of places some boardwalks would be nice, but far from essential.

During the final stage it started to rain, and then to my surprise it turned into hail. Can’t recall the last time I’d tramped in hail. Didn’t last too long, but my sunhat proved useful in protecting my head!

Finally got to Waiharuru Hut around 3.30 pm. Pretty tired after 20 kms but very glad we changed our plans and carried on. There are actually two huge huts here. The left hand one is sleeping quarters for 40 people – all with individual bunk beds. The right hand one is the communal dining and socialising hall.

This hut also had a Tuhoe warden, and again he was great. After dinner he introduced himself and his background and then asked each table to do the same. Was really nice to hear everyone talk about their groups. The Scottish trampers even sang Scotland the Brave. The warden touched on some of the issues between them and DOC (they were not happy a hut was put on Mt Panekire without consulting them as they regard it as sacred, but they said now it is there they will support it). We actually saw this warden on day 1 also when he was fixing parts of the track up there. He often walks much of the track most days, while the other warden comes in by boat.

I’ve stayed in dozens of other DOC huts with many friendly wardens. But there was something special about having the Tuhoe wardens share the history of the area and make you feel so welcome in what is effectively their home.

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

The Taxpayers’ Union today mourns the passing of Garrick Tremain, widely regarded as New Zealand’s finest and most influential political cartoonist of the contemporary era.

Garrick Tremain and Tom Scott are the two political cartoonists who stood out for me. Both so talented at their ability to puncture pomposity and make you laugh.

Last night I had the beautiful privilege of going to a remarkable concert at Vector Arena in Auckland.

My beautiful wife and I drove in from Dairy Flat with only minor delays, near the port, due to the ASB Classic Tennis – which was clearly pumping.

We had a superb dinner at Gerome in Parnell and then made our way to the concert and parked easily nearby.

Vector Arena was almost sold out for the great David Byrne of Talking Heads – and solo career – fame. He – as they say in the biz – killed it – and broke a couple of legs! I even danced, in a limited way.

When we left we had choices of how we drove back to beautiful Dairy Flat and the traffic management was superb.

We choose to drive via the new hospitality developments near the viaduct and the place was simply humming. Lit up and loads of punters.

We were just 40 minutes after leaving our seats to home – and without time to say “congestion”.

Auckland may just be on the way … and just wait until the CRL opens.

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Day 2 was a downhill day. Started off high up in typical NZ bush.

There were around 250 steps going down. I was glad we had them down, not up. I much prefer a sloping track to steps.

Even when there are no views of the lake, it is still beautiful terrain.

We got to Waiopaoa Hut by 11.30 am. It is down next to the lake and was in very good condition.

The original plan was to tramp to Waiharuru Hut on Day 3 with a side trip to the Korokoro Falls. But we decided to bypass Waiharuru Hut making Day 3 a very long day, so decided to do the side trip to Korokoro Falls on Day 2.

This was a very pleasant 3.5 kms (each way) to Korokoro campsite and 1.5 kms up to the falls, so a 10 km side trip! But we had all afternoon so enjoyed it.

I wasn’t expecting lupins, but this section of the track had lots of them. Felt like Central Otago!

The track from the turnoff up to Korokoro Falls is slightly challenging, including a stream crossing where there is a useful metal cable to help you balance over the rocks.

The Korokoro Falls. In hindsight I should have have a shower in them!

Me with the falls as background.

Back at the hut, this is the view of the lake. Most of us went swimming in the lake and I was surprised by how warm it was. Was a great way to refresh after 18 kms of tramping.

An article at The Conversation has how NZ has fared in various international rankings. They are:

• 2nd: Civil Liberties
• 3rd: Security
• 4th: Corruption
• 5th: Gender equality, Rule of law
• 6th: Terrorism
• 7th: Quality of life
• 11th: Economic freedom
• 12th: Happiness
• 16th: Media freedom
• 17th: Foreign aid
• 26th: Innovation
• 31st: Competitiveness, Economic Performance
• 32nd: Youth mental health
• 43rd: AI regulation
• 44th: Climate change

There are around 200 countries in the world. Not all rankings are of all 200 though.

It is reported that Iran has massacred 12,000 pro-freedom protesters in less than a fortnight: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/least-12-000-possibly-20-185320083.html Where is everyone who has been protesting Israel’s actions weekly over the past two years?

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa accused Israel of genocide three days after the Iranian-funded massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, before Israel had even started its military response in Gaza. But needless to say it has said nothing about Iran’s murder of its own people. Peace Action Wellington continued to call for sanctions on Israel on its Facebook page on 14 January 2026, yet has not at the time of writing called for sanctions on Iran or said anything about the massacre.

I also have yet to see a single media outlet describe Iran’s actions towards its own people as a “genocide”, even though the total death toll in Iran now in the space of a fortnight comes to 20% of the total death toll in Gaza over a two year period including combatants (according to Hamas’ own figures).

The hypocrisy is limitless.

In December I did my 9th NZ Great Walk. I plan to do all 11. I drove up from Wellington to Wairoa the day before.

The river in Wairoa was pleasant, and very friendly accomodation at Vista Motor Lodge. The highlight of Wairoa was seeing the small size (a two story building) of the Wairoa District Council and thinking all councils should be forced to fit into a similar size building 🙂

The next morning drove for around an hour to the Waikaremoana Holiday Park where we had a water taxi booked for 8 am. The pilot (universally referred to as Captain Jack Sparrow) was super friendly, and even allowed us to change the time for our pickup on the last day. He took us to Onepoto where we started the track.

The first day is a lot of uphill. You go up to around 1200 metres and it is pretty hard work. Some people say they prefer to leave the uphill until later in the tramp when the pack is lighter, but I prefer getting it out of the way on Day 1 when fully rested.

You get some great views of the lake as you ascend.

This is the view from where we stopped for lunch. Amazing.

Quite a lot of what people call goblin forest higher up. Always beautiful.

Got to Panekire Hut around 2 pm. Great views from the lawn outside it, so spent much time there meeting other trampers. Many were following same timetable as us, so got to know quite well almost a dozen trampers. The hut is one of the older ones. and unusually has triple bunks. So lots of climbing up ladders for those at the top.

These huts don’t have gas cookers, so this was the first tramp for a while where I had to bring in a Primus. Had a passable dehydrated meal for dinner.

Hard to overstate how beautiful the views of the lake are, from so high up.

The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan on Politician of the Year:

That leaves, by a whisker, the winner: Chris Bishop (it’s a good year for Chrises from the Hutt).

Associate Finance Minister, Transport Minister, Housing Minister, RMA Reform Minister, Bishop has very obviously donned the mantle of “minister of everything”.

Bishop is perhaps the Government’s busiest reformer, with the transport, housing and RMA reform portfolios each being enough to burden most ordinary ministers. The staggered, tactical approach to RMA reform has been a success, and while Bishop is clearly standing on David Parker’s shoulders when it comes to the structure of some of the Government’s reforms, it’s impressive what he’s managed to accomplish in two years.

The Post politics team:

Chris Bishop is the main character of New Zealand politics. At press time he was not the leader of any major party (those are the other Christophers) but he often made more headlines than the rest of them put together. Bishop was the person most integral to all of the government’s most ambitious reforms, from the replacement of the RMA to rates capping to tolled roads of national significance.

Tova O’Brien:

Politician of the year goes to… Shihad-esque drum roll please… Minister for Everything, Chris Bishop. Congratulations.

Newsroom picks a few people also, but notes:

You’d have to recognise Chris Bishop for sheer workload

A clear victory for the MP for Hutt South!